First of all, thank you to Dan and the rest of the Environmental Action team for inviting me to blog here while Dan is on vacation. I hope you all enjoy my posts as much as Dan's.

As you've probably seen or heard already, the "father of the hybrid car," David Hermance, died in a plane crash on Saturday. The condolences of the entire Environmental Action team go out to his friends and family. Dave was the Executive Engineer for Advanced Technology Vehicles for Toyota, and oversaw the development and launch of the Prius.

But let's talk about David's legacy, and what hybrid cars are doing for our country (besides reducing pollution and using less gas).

In an interview with Alan Alda (yes, that Alan Alda) for the PBS program "Scientific American Frontiers" in 2004, David Hermance was asked, "If [the Prius] is so good, why don't you just say to them, here's the car for you, and this is the one you're going to get because this gets the best mileage, it performs just like the car you've been driving, only this is better. Costs about the same and so now that's the car that you can buy. Why offer them others that are not as good?"

Dave's response shows just how far we've come since 2004: "Well, in the US, sad to say, folks don't largely value fuel economy. Most of the population of the US is not convinced that global warming is real or that cars have anything to do with it."

You can read the rest of this transcript here, if you're interested.

Since this interview, sales of hybrid cars in the US (lead by the Prius) have skyrocketed (Jan. 2006 report, Top Ten Hybrids of 2006), and global warming has taken center stage as the environmental issue facing our country and our world in the minds of a growing number of Americans.

This sea change shows no sign of slowing, and it is the result of countless hours of work by scientists, activists like you and me, and even an ex-Vice President to spread the word about global warming and the dangers it poses to our planet.

The fact that hybrid cars were introduced and marketed as green alternatives over six years ago is also an important reason why global warming, energy independence, and fuel efficiency loom larger on the radar screens of many Americans today. Dave's legacy is one not only of technological innovation, but also one of raising awareness of probably the biggest challenge to ever confront us as a species.

Thanks to innovators like David Hermance, we are in a better position today to stop global warming before we feel its worst effects. Dave understood that sometimes you have to introduce the change before the "market researchers" say we're ready for it. He didn't wait until global warming was making headlines to do something about it, and we need more leaders like him in both our government and energy and transportation industries. The time to create real change is now. Hybrid cars were the beginning, but we need to go much further.

Dave's sudden death is tragic. He was 59, and the engine in his small plane apparently just stopped running while he was flying off the coast of California. It is comforting, however, to know that he lived long enough to see the early success of his work.

Dave, we'll miss you, but we promise to pick up where you left off. Thanks.

The folks over at Worldchanging pointed out this very cool site, Worldmapper, where they've created a 100 different world maps along various parameters: exports of fish, imports of vegetables, tourism loss, etc.

Check out this one on vehicle freight:

I thought our own map of oil reserves was pretty cool. But 100 of them? Even cooler.

Almost two months to the day since the NY Times broke the story that NASA political appointees were trying to silence climate scientists, NASA has issued a new communications policy. The policy permits scientists to be interviewed by the media about their research and to provide their own personal interpretation of the findings. Moreover, while scientists are encouraged to have public affairs staff accompany them to interviews, they are not required to do so.

Given the speed at which scientists are gathering information about the changing climate, this is a strategic victory in the fight against global warming. Of course, reports also arose that NOAA was censoring its scientists, so there is clearly some work to be done before all federal research is fully shared with the public.

I've been on the road visiting some of our Northeast field offices the past few days, which explains the sporadic and at times completely non-existent posts.

But I got to curl up with the New Yorker (in New York of all places) for a bit last night and made it part way through Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent piece on the tragic destiny of southern Louisiana.

I know that most of you won't be able to read it, but I thought I would pull a few paragraphs out:

Five thousand years ago, much of southern Louisiana did not exist. A hundred years from now, it is unclear how much of it will remain. The region, it is often observed, is losing land at the rate of a football field every thirty-eight minutes. Alternatively, it is said, the area is shrinking by a large desktop's worth of ground every second, or a tennis court's worth every thirteen seconds, or twenty-five square miles a year. Between 1930 and 2000, some 1.2 million acres, an area roughly the size of Delaware, disappeared. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita stripped away an estimiated seventy-five thousand acres--a loss as big as Manhattan and Brooklyn combined. The U.S. Geological Survey has published a map illustrating the process. Areas that have already vanished appear in red, and areas that are expected to vanish by 2050 in yellow. On the map, the southern coast looks as if it were on fire. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "The rate at which Louisiana's land is converting to water is probably the fastest in the world."

Over the years, a great mnay plans have been drawn up to protect the Louisiana coast; these range from building up barrier islands with pumped sand to digging an alternative route for the Mississippi River--the so-called Third Delta Conveyance Channel. Katrina and Rita have inspired a whole new generation of proposals...All of these plans rest on the same assumption, which is that something can be done to halt, or at least dramatically slow, land loss. If this can be acccomplished, there are many possible futures for southern Louisiana. If it can't, there is only one.

And one great quote from Roy Dokka, a geologist at LSU, who is sounding the alarm bells about the rates at which the area is sinking:

"I don't want to be the person who pulled the rug out from under southern Louisiana," Dokka said later, as we walked back to the car. "But ultimately it's going to get so bad over her--in fifty to a hundred years, maybe sooner--that this is going to go under water."

Although I haven't made it through the whole piece yet, Kolbert does a great job of chronicling the successive communities and towns that have been dispersed or washed away completely. Yet I can't figure out whether it is an inspiring testatment to human endurance that we have continued to rebuild and reinhabit the area or a monumental dose of stupidity that we haven't moved on.

The name is a mouthful: OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb. But at the rate we're going, we can just call it home.